Archive for May, 2013

Welcome to EADiva, a plain-talking EAD tag library. Despite its tongue-in-cheek name, I have taken this project very seriously and have attempted to create a friendlier version of the Library of Congress EAD tag library.

My goal in creating this site was to make a resource oriented toward people who are attempting to learn EAD but may not have much more experience with XML than one gets in basic library school classes. The Library of Congress’s tag library uses some terms which may confuse a person who is unable to read a DTD. Attributes are described separately from elements, causing a need for much back-and-forth to understand how they relate to the elements. Element pages also don’t link to the elements they mention, making the user spend much more time navigating.

I cannot overstate how much the LoC’s tag library has helped me over the past 7 months as I’ve written the element pages for this site. It is a tremendous resource and I outline some of its advantages on the about page for this site. But when I studied it for my library school projects, I saw room for improvement. I saw places where I knew that some of my fellow students who have less technical backgrounds might find themselves frustrated. I think many people who could use a better knowledge of EAD, students and professionals alike, need a different starting place and don’t need the level of technical knowledge to understand a DTD. Thus, I built EADiva.

The name comes from a joke with one of my classmates as we corresponded about a paper on the subject. But it stuck in my head, evolving into the idea for this site. I don’t claim to be an EADiva, but I would like to evolve into one. If you would too, this site is here to help.